Trump’s View of Russia: Intentional or Flattery?

With Obama leaving with fresh wounds on US-Russia relationship, Trump and Putin are served a cluttered situation to refresh.

Of all the policies that Trump is mulling to implement, Russian diplomacy seems to be his dearest, evident by the very many affirming prompts he has given to reverse the friction in the US-Russia relationship that stands untested since the Cold War. Trump is offering his sincere friendship to Russia, he wills to change the US-Russia relationship status in his presidency occupation. Trumps being able to change the mass perspectives of Americans toward Russia, when history proves more years of distance between them than closeness looks difficult; but the two leaders have publicly expressed affection for one another and both vouch to work together on important and relevant issues. Any attempt to rebuild a weak or decaying relationship is bold in its nature, which Trump and Putin have evidently shown.

However, picking up a legacy of undesired and (typically) irrevocable decisions of the Obama administration and repairing them will require a unique force of intellect, and pondering over possible eventualities. The most recent allegations of Russian hackers’ involvement in rigging the US presidential election has instigated Obama to ridicule Russia publicly, so much so that in his leftover days he expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the US and put sanctions on Russia for rigging. Trump in contrast is looking forward to undoing the expelling and joining hands with Putin. Trump faces consternation from his own men; two of Trump’s Republican Party members endorsed the sanctions imposed by Obama. Trump may find it difficult in undoing the sanctions and expulsions, if his congressional party men refuse to support reversing Obama’s decision. Besides, Trump is falling for Russia because he feels it is genuinely interested to eliminate the ISIS, admittedly more seriously than Obama, who possibly is guilty of arming the rebels in Syria. Putin on the other side, waits for Trump’s response post 20th January.

Trump may be hooked to befriend Russia more seriously because of their common policy stand of hating terrorism, and even possibly of hating Muslims. Is this the strong link that is fuelling the magnetic bond growing between Trump and Putin? As for terrorism, they are more aligned in their interest to eliminate it than any other nation, and this could well be a turning point for the geopolitics of the Middle East and Syria. With Obama backing the Syrian rebels and Putin backing the Syrian army to eliminate the ISIS, war prospects between the two military behemoths was vaguely anticipated. But with Trump’s presidency, even if there is a war they will be seen fighting together against a common enemy, ISIS.

Factoring Trump’s hatred for China for being protectionist and selfish, his move to bond with Russia is a smart manoeuvre, as it provides direct access to Syria, and the ISIS, in that the two leaders share a common intent. Barring China and India in the Eurasia region, Russia remains a powerful nuclear enabled ally. One possible intent to join Russia to end the ISIS could be to quickly scrap the nation-building and regime change policy of the US by pulling all efforts to finish the last mile of Obama’s leftover Syria decisions. An uncomplicated relationship can possibly exist only in theory between the US and Russia, as the reasons for their friendship outweighs the reasons for enmity, at least under current conditions, giving yet another mysterious outlook for the two Cold War era rivals.